Before and After

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Fresh from seminary with a head full of historical-critical theory competing against my immortal soul, I was lost in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I’d learned enough in class and in my own reading to know that the association of Jesus’ burial here only dates back to the fourth century. And also that the identification was made by a politician—Helena was the mother of Constantine—and not a archaeologist, or even a theologian (God help us!). The location was, in other words, hearsay. Three hundred years is a long time to keep track of where something happened. I sit on a bus trundling through Weehawken every day and ponder that we don’t really know where Alexander Hamilton was shot. Such are the ravages of time. I was young and, presciently didn’t know if I’d ever return to Israel, so I wanted to make sure at the time. It was holy confusion. Finally an elderly Coptic monk beaconed me into his edicule to touch the stone. He gave me a cheap rosary and asked for a donation.

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The scene returned to me when a friend sent me a story about the “discovery” of the actual chamber behind the build-up. The report by Fiona MacDonald in Science Alert briefly tells the background to the location and describes the hurried excavation. Still, we have no idea if, as Indiana Jones might say, “They’re digging in the wrong place.” Tradition has nevertheless hallowed the spot. For seventeen-hundred years some people have suggested this is where it all happened, and where many of the liturgical churches agree. Some Protestant groups, attuned to the Bible a bit more than tradition, have suggested The Garden Tomb is the correct location. The years ago when an academic future seemed in store, I stopped by there too, just in case. There were no crowds.

An enormous amount of effort was poured into building and maintaining the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Crowded with tourists and various orders of clergy, I wondered how anyone might find such an experience spiritual. Territories are marked out between the various denominations seeking legitimacy in stone. Who wouldn’t want to own the spot where it actually happened? Wouldn’t that be the ultimate truth claim? So more money is being spent. More digging is taking place. Science, some believe, might come to the rescue of religion. From my experience, brief though it was, trying to make sense of the Holy Sepulcher, I have my doubts. But what do I know? I’m not even sure if Copts use rosaries.

Mrs. Jesus

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First we learned that Yahweh was married. Then we hear, “like father, like son.” A Galilean tempest in a Wonderland teapot. A papyrus fragment from centuries after the fact implies Jesus might have been married and the media smells blood. The scholars who translated the materials tried very hard to demonstrate that their efforts indicated nothing about the historical Jesus, but that doesn’t sell newspapers, magazines, and website hits. Jesus being married does. Spying an article about this in the Chronicle of Higher Education recently, I pondered why this might be. Why the great fuss over Jesus’ potential marriage? This is not an easy fabric to unweave. Americans have been routinely taught to idealize Jesus in order to underscore his divinity. A man without warts, no faults, perfect hygiene, completely symmetrical. His unwed nature is silent testimony to male superiority—when God chose to incarnate, he picked a masculine template. And for a man to need anything is a sign of weakness. If some Coptic Gnostic suggests that maybe Jesus had a weakness after all, well, that’s scandal enough to sell a million copies right there.

Theologians are quick to say that God is really beyond gender, but we sexual beings are so, well, focused on our biological packaging that we just can’t conceive a deity any other way. American culture thrives on the concept of a personal relationship with God. It is difficult to have a relationship without assessing the sexual roles. More than reproduction, our sexuality defines how we interact with others. By recasting Jesus as a married man, the whole dynamic is thrown off. Girls who are taught to uphold the virginal Jesus as an ideal man would now have to create room for the other woman. Boys would no longer have to consider the monastery. Overestimating the impact of marrying off Jesus in this country might well prove impossible.

The Chronicle takes a bemused look at the issue, as befits a disaffected, intellectual publication. For most Americans the relationship can never be so diffident. Scholars may find it funny, but we are vastly outnumbered. Like a divine paternity test, ink analysis of the papyrus fragment is out at the lab. If it’s just another forgery, life goes on much as before. The fact is, as has been stressed all along, all that can be potentially proven is that some people in the fourth century thought Jesus had a main squeeze. People have wondered that for centuries, with or without a papyrus to spark discussion. We are sexual beings, and like Xenophanes’s horses, our gods must look like us or become like the shadow over Innsmouth.

“And I think the couch should go over there!”